travellight wrote:I had suggested (strongly) to a colleague at work that he should take out his first dates to a nice restaurant that he has a 50% discount coupon for. Whip out the coupon when he pays the check and anyone who responds negatively is automatically out.

Frankly, I would rather go to a restaurant with Petrocelli without a shirt than with some of you, guys. The hair on his back seems classy in comparison.

Victoria

WINNER of the 2015 Boglehead Contest. |
Every joke has a bit of a joke. ... The rest is the truth. (Marat F)

I had a guy/friend who I knew wanted to treat me to a nice restaurant so I picked out one that I had a 50% coupon for. We got there and had a great meal, then when it came time to pay the check, I discovered I had left the coupon at home. He didn't even know I had a discount planned. I asked him to wait while I ran outside and scoured the streets and found the publication where I found another coupon and returned in a few minutes. It saved him 30-40$. I just see this as thoughtful and money wise rather than not classy.

Travel you sound like a wonderful lady for some Boglehead. My wife does things like that today even after 44 years of the good life and even though we can now afford to pay 100%. She does the forget thing and makes me go find a paper for a coupon at least once a year. Wonderful attribute......

I know back when we got together we were both broke college kids. I knew early on she would be frugal when we could go out on date to a local pub for $1. Yes she was a cheap fun date. A bottle of Ripple back then cost like 40 cents and I could get a beer for 20 cents and we could dance to house music all night and have a ball. Boy was that fun back when.

travellight wrote:I had suggested (strongly) to a colleague at work that he should take out his first dates to a nice restaurant that he has a 50% discount coupon for. Whip out the coupon when he pays the check and anyone who responds negatively is automatically out.

Frankly, I would rather go to a restaurant with Petrocelli without a shirt than with some of you, guys. The hair on his back seems classy in comparison.

nisiprius wrote:... I married the person who felt RIGHT, and hoped she was financially compatible with me. Luckily, she was. I am afraid there's a lot of luck involved in courtship and mating and not much that can or should be done about it.

A feeling it's right, hoping it is, being lucky, realizing not a lot can or should be done about it - sounds like the right approach to life in general. A lovely post, Nisiprius.

shawcroft wrote:Travellight:
Great concept! In these times of "Groupon", that might be a great way to see how she reacts .......
Shawcroft

It might help to appear a little more hardcore than Groupon. It's almost trendy to buy Groupons. I know people who buy Groupons who would never in a million years clip newspaper coupons, or be considered frugal for that matter. I think if you really want to know how a prospective mate views frugality take them to someplace like Taco Bell, Pizza Hut or the snack bar at Target and whip out a handful of coupons clipped from the Sunday paper. Start sorting through them at the table before the orders are placed, show them to your date and ask if she spots any meal-deals that appeal to her. If she seems eager to help sort the coupons, or better yet brings up the possibility of sharing a soda rather than pay rip-off prices for two drinks, then you know it's a match made in Boglehead-heaven.

Basically, I got lucky. We both worked (and still work) for the same employer in a small rural town, where both of us came only because we happened to get jobs here. On my first day of work, one of my colleagues introduced me to her while showing me around. It turned out we lived in the same apartment building, two doors apart.

After a while, we started "going together." We didn't really "date" in the traditional sense. (I'd better point out that we were both in our 30s at this point.) We shared dinners and evenings in each other's apartments, shopped for groceries, sometimes went to concerts, etc. We met each other's parents as they visited us, and then we started traveling together to visit them.

It soon became clear that we were pretty much on the same wavelength as far as financial matters and general approach to life were concerned, even though we come from rather different backgrounds: my parents were a firefighter and a school secretary in a Midwestern steel-mill town, her father was a middle-level executive who worked in Manhattan and lived on Long Island with a stay-at-home wife.

After about a year and a half of going together, we got married and bought a house, with some help from both sets of parents. We'll celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary this summer. We'll both be completely retired in a few years, and it looks like we're in pretty good shape relative to the cost of living here, unless of course the economy completely collapses around us.

My investing princiPLEs do not include absolutely preserving princiPAL.

I met my wife at work. We were both working for the same federal agency. So I knew she was definitely a keeper...she had a stable job outlook, great promotion potential, access to a pension, great healthcare coverage, and access to the TSP and the coveted G Fund.....and she was gorgeous!

The funny thing was that we grew up about 1 mile from each other, our parents worked together, our relatives were friends, but never met until we were at working just outside of Boston.

My approach was to date in ways that matched my desired lifestyle. My friends spent lavishly on dates, particularly when they competed for women of "high value". I took my dates on picnics, for hikes, to parks and zoos, and other activities that were inexpensive. My lack of funds certainly helped with that approach. I'm sure that cost me repeat dates with a lot of women, but it helped sort my prospects to women more compatible with me.

The final icing on the cake was when I proposed to my wife. I laid out my meager finances for her, showed he which funds I could sell to get cash for an engagement ring, and how much in capital gains taxes I would have to pay when I did so. I offered her the option of a ring or just keeping the funds since they would all be hers after we got married. She opted to keep the funds (most of which were later used for a down payment on a house). Now we're middle aged and well off. She still doesn't have an engagement ring (though I offer periodically) but she does have a paid for house.

She found me on the internet from across the world in 2008. A few months later we met in person in BKK. I was there for a day and a half stopping over on a tour going to Cambodia and Vietnam and she lived there. She took the day off work and we went out to see some temples and sights I had missed on my first trip to Thailand (before we knew each other). We needed to get across the Chao Phrya River and we took a taxi and then walked to a barge crossing were I was going to pay the 100 baht a head price for us but she would not let me, instead we had to walk another two blocks where it was 6 baht a head. The conversion rate is about 30 baht to the dollar. Afetr some back and forth trips and many hundreds of calls, September 18, 2010, we married in BKK in a Buddhist Cultural Ceremony and last December 10, we married legally in the USA. Still working our way through immigration paperwork...... what a PIA, stacks and stacks of documents and fees so high they could have only been designed to be exclusionary. [Off-topic comment removed by admin LadyGeek]

travellight wrote:I had suggested (strongly) to a colleague at work that he should take out his first dates to a nice restaurant that he has a 50% discount coupon for. Whip out the coupon when he pays the check and anyone who responds negatively is automatically out.

That's pretty funny. I'd be too embarassed to do that, but it would let you know quick. The only problem is it gives the impression that the date was not important, which will turn some datees off regardless of their frugalness.

How to find a frugal and sensible mate in an increasingly crazy world? Join a club, a coed sport or a church. I found mine by being involved in a coed sport. I never met a good potential mate at a fraternity party and I happily had my share of those. Be patient, it can take a long time. It took me thirty years to just find her. I'm not a perfectionist, but I dated long enough to develop a bit of a sixth sense about people. If I had any question about person's character, that was it. Flakiness was a deal killer, too. I didn't want flaky kids....

The person's parents and home life can tell you a lot, although I have seen a few normal, grounded people emerge from a crazy upbringing. I also figured I was making the right decision about marriage when my good friends suggested that I was the questionable one in the relationship!

You have to get lucky, too. But don't be in a big hurry. It can take a while. Being single for a good period of time won't hurt you, either.

fratdude wrote:I am asking for input for anyone married to a Mrs. or Mr. Boglehead.

I was wondering if some of the older and wiser members of the forum could provide some advice when it comes to significant others.
Basically, it seems like there are a lot of 20 or early thirty something women out there who aren't particular frugal, as I'm sure the ladies here have found true of men as well.

Where did you meet your wife/husband ? How important was their frugality to you ? How did you know they were down to earth and reasonable with their finances ?
The dating world is a struggle and maybe learning where you all met your spouses would give good clues on where to look.

This may not answer your question, but this is a story that most people find pretty cool when it comes to finding love. It's about me and my wife who have been married for 20 years.

I think the best way to meet someone who shares your values are to become friends first. That is what happened with me and my wife. I met my wife at work. I immediately was shot by cupid when I saw her. She was known as Linda the pretty girl from the other people at work. The only problem was she was wayyy out of my league and she was four months away from being married to someone else (the big wedding and all) and to make matters worse, he was filthy rich and I was dirt poor.

So knowing that there was no way I could get her for the reasons above, we just became friends. When you just become friends you talk to each other in a different way. Don't get me wrong I had a huge crush on her, but I knew there was no way on earth I could get a stunningly beautiful girl who was four months away from marrying a rich guy.

Next thing I knew, every free time she had at work she was walking up to me and I noticed she was spending a lot of time talking to me whenever she could. After a solid month of this, I get a phone call from her saying she canceled her wedding and she is moving out of the house. Yes, he even bought a big house they were having custom built. She was calling me because she was scared and needed a friend to talk to. I also knew they were having problems because he was becoming increasingly possessive and jealous.

To make a long story short, we soon began dating right after this and a year and a half later we got married.

Money was never a big issue with my wife and we are both frugal. We work well together. She does not use a credit card if she can't pay it back in full and she hates debt as much as I do.

These are things you really must talk about before tying the knot. If not, I can assure you the marriage will not last. The number one thing a married couple fights about is money issues and if you are both responsible, you will not have the issues to fight about. I know it's not easy, but when it comes to love and destiny things have a funny way of working out.

The only other bit of advice is work on yourself during this time and be happy being alone. The less you try, that is when you may find Miss Right. That is exactley how it worked out for me.

The right partner can make your life worth living, but the wrong partner can make your life hell. And thanks to having a couple of serious relationships before I met my wife I have experienced both.

The only problem is it gives the impression that the date was not important, which will turn some datees off regardless of their frugalness.

Ahhh, this is where you get to process if she is frugal/value driven AND smart. If someone took me out to a nice, top shelf restaurant, he is already telling me that the date is important to him and he is making a big effort. I think it would be dumb or messed up to conclude otherwise. I can't imagine that I would feel less valued because he used a coupon to get a discount.... I personally would just be even more impressed that he knows how to extract the most value for his hard earned money.

OTOH, if he took me out to Taco Bell and paid full price, or went Dutch, I would likely think he was cheap and/or did not think the date was important.

I think you can also tell a lot by how she orders. The story earlier of someone who ordered 9-12$ martinis and the most expensive items on the menu come to mind. If I think someone else is paying the bill, I will order conservatively and thoughtfully. If I really want to go all out and be lavish and indulge in dinner, I will insist on paying the bill.

I found the eventual Mrs. Boglehead in a statistics class my freshman year of college. She was in my breakout class (taught by a TA) and I used to admire her when she would go up to the whiteboard to solve problems.

I basically would get her help with homework and studying and then eventually I asked her to Vegas for a fraternity formal at the end of the year. She almost didn't come because she has a paper due the following Monday (keep in mind this was an event that most freshman girls were dying to go to) but she finished it before the weekend and came along. We hung out for the last few weeks of the year and then started officially dating the beginning of sophomore year.

She was a 3.7 GPA student with a business major and corporate finance concentration and was a national merit scholar. Fast forward 8 years and at only 26 she has saved a mid 6 figure portfolio on her own and currently has a great job that pays very well. Despite her high income, she is very reasonable when it comes to what she buys and how much she saves.

Find a smart girl and she will most likely be reasonable with her finances.

She was working at a job that was lousier than mine at the time. We had both been through lengthy and costly divorces. At the time, we both had nothing of value, and plenty of it. I had alimony payments and two daughters living with me. She had three kids, one in jail and two married.

We certainly were not your typical Bogleheads or pre-boglehead candidates at the time. Both lived in apartments we couldn't afford, had little in the way of assets, and little in the way of a plan for a cozy, Boglehead kind of future in front of us.

Over time, we got to know each other better and actually liked being together. Well, we got married a few years later (I was 53, she was 51) and put our heads together, worked hard and made it work for the better. The kids tuned out fine (some even finished college), we saved a lot, paid off the house and quite frankly, life is very good.

I was her tour guide when she came to the University for summer orientation. She was brilliant, cute and fun.
Pre Med with 1600 SATs national Merit scholar and played a lovely flute
But one look at her clothes and I knew she was even cheaper than I was. That was 43 years ago.
To paraphrase the "Left hand of Darkness" she was a good person to pull a sledge with
As an MD she led her field. Many years later they were giving out awards and it was 9 guys in grey suits and my lovely lady in a bright red silk.
A senior Prof. from Harvard said "no wonder you're grinning, you're dating the Prom Queen

I met my wife while waiting to give a ride to a friend to a salsa dance at a local college. Ironically, the waiting area had a swing dance going on, so I decided join that while I was waiting. By chance, I met my future wife. who was getting a PhD there. Whatever she was a boglehead type or not was really the furthest from my mind. I was just interested to see if we clicked and see where we go from there.

Over the years, I realized that a lot of dates were by chance, but one can stack the deck a bit. I didn't go to bars because it was too difficult to talk with music blasting, and I didn't like dealing with drunks. However, I found that I like dancing, but was terrible at it. So I took a lot of classes at a local college and eventually become ok at it. It took over 2 years but I did end up meeting a lot of people. My advice is to figure out what you love and see what you can do with it socially to meet more opposite sex. If all of your hobbies are really male oriented, you may need to stretch a bit and do something different. Never do what you don't like, but try something different to open up avenues.

We met at church, set up by our pastor. She has no interest in investing, but we're similarly frugal. (Though she says I make her feel like a spendthrift.)

I think a lot of it is worldview. We just bought a car from a guy who traded in a 2004 for a 2009 last year, then this year traded in his 2009 for something newer still. He had to pay over half of our purchase price straight to the bank, because he still owed on the car he was selling. We had to finance a little of our first car out of college, but that's a worldview that just doesn't make sense to either of us. Start talking about plans and aspirations, and you'll discover pretty quickly how your worldviews line up. If her aspiration (or transportation) is a fancy new car while she's just starting out, be scared. If it's to be able to pay cash for a decently nice car, you'll do fine. My wife and I found that our leading aspiration was to be able to make substantial charitable donations. Now, we live below our means, give a substantial chunk away, save a substantial chunk, and live on the balance.

In some respects, I think it's harder to tell once they've had a chance to get established in their careers, because there's less obvious difference between the people who are leveraged to the hilt but keeping up with it because they make good money, and the people who are in good enough financial shape to use some of the good money for fun things. The gap between frugal and not-frugal narrows a bit, and only becomes obvious when a crisis hits.

midareff wrote:[...]Afetr some back and forth trips and many hundreds of calls, September 18, 2010, we married in BKK in a Buddhist Cultural Ceremony and last December 10, we married legally in the USA.[...]

I would assume that Buddhist Cultural Ceremony marriages would be legal in the USA as well! What they asked us (different country, different religion) for was 'registration of marriage' paperwork.

archbish99 wrote:[...]We just bought a car from a guy who traded in a 2004 for a 2009 last year, then this year traded in his 2009 for something newer still. He had to pay over half of our purchase price straight to the bank, because he still owed on the car he was selling.[...]

More than how you found your Mrs. Boglehead, I am interested in finding out how you found your car-seller!

archbish99 wrote:[...]We just bought a car from a guy who traded in a 2004 for a 2009 last year, then this year traded in his 2009 for something newer still. He had to pay over half of our purchase price straight to the bank, because he still owed on the car he was selling.[...]

More than how you found your Mrs. Boglehead, I am interested in finding out how you found your car-seller!

travellight wrote:I had suggested (strongly) to a colleague at work that he should take out his first dates to a nice restaurant that he has a 50% discount coupon for. Whip out the coupon when he pays the check and anyone who responds negatively is automatically out.

Frankly, I would rather go to a restaurant with Petrocelli without a shirt than with some of you, guys. The hair on his back seems classy in comparison.

travellight wrote:I had suggested (strongly) to a colleague at work that he should take out his first dates to a nice restaurant that he has a 50% discount coupon for. Whip out the coupon when he pays the check and anyone who responds negatively is automatically out.

50% discount? You mean, buy one dinner and get one free? The Tuesday night special, as it's known around here, is for senior couples on a budget. Not for first dates!

Coupons are dicey territory. A woman who knows coupons will think you are stupid for using anything less than a 30% coupon -- 10% and 20% coupons are just restaurant advertising, not a significant deal. Anything more than 30% and you risk looking cheap, or maybe you are being cheap. Lots of shades of grey there.

Another tip is, leave the coupons at home on Valentine's Day.

Yet another tip is, just go to restaurants you can afford without coupons and if she wants more, let her dump you.

travellight wrote:I had suggested (strongly) to a colleague at work that he should take out his first dates to a nice restaurant that he has a 50% discount coupon for. Whip out the coupon when he pays the check and anyone who responds negatively is automatically out.

Frankly, I would rather go to a restaurant with Petrocelli without a shirt than with some of you, guys. The hair on his back seems classy in comparison.

Victoria

Would Petrocelli be wearing a shirt?

The watch will suffice.

Victoria

Last edited by VictoriaF on Thu Feb 14, 2013 6:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

WINNER of the 2015 Boglehead Contest. |
Every joke has a bit of a joke. ... The rest is the truth. (Marat F)

travellight wrote:If someone took me out to a nice, top shelf restaurant, he is already telling me that the date is important to him and he is making a big effort. I think it would be dumb or messed up to conclude otherwise. I can't imagine that I would feel less valued because he used a coupon to get a discount.... I personally would just be even more impressed that he knows how to extract the most value for his hard earned money.

There are two problems with this. First, nice, top-shelf restaurants don't give out coupons. Although if one is in college, then maybe those that qualify as "nice" in one's book do! Second, the coupon may very well devalue the date, because gives the (almost certainly correct) impression that place chosen was not the result of a conscious effort to please the invitee, but the result of whatever coupons happened to be available that week in the school newspaper. It is the "thought" that counts and coupons almost certainly mean that your decision is based on the thought of saving money, rather than valuing your date appropriately.

Again, there is a part of me that likes the idea, because of the hint of truth and amusing nature of the "test." But even normal people would think this would go beyond frugal. I would much rather take someone out to a good, but not overpriced place without whipping out a coupon at the end of a romantic evening...

I just thought of a better idea. Skip the coupon, roll up 20 one dollar bills inside of a Franklin, produce it with the arrival of the bill, and ask the waiter if there is a discount if you pay cash. Thus, you give the impression that you are rolling in it, but know the value of a dollar...

I met my Mr. Boglehead at work. We are both bankers so I suppose financially we were meant to be; it just so happened that everything else fell into place too. There are various sides of a Boglehead - there's the frugal side and the investment savvy side and the income maximization side, etc. If you can find somebody who's committed to one of the sides at least and who cares about setting and reaching financial goals in general then you can hammer out the rest over time. The key is really to avoid anybody with an entitled mentality and/or a demonstrated inability to save or budget. If a girl or guy is in their late 20s or early 30's and hasn't established a retirement account yet that's a red flag. If they have any credit card debt that's a red flag. It indicates values/habits that will be very hard to change. But if they are just clueless a bit about investing that shouldn't be a dealbreaker at a young age (now if you're in your 40's or older dating it's another whole story).

My Mr. is definitely far more frugal than I am, but we both save a huge chunk of our income and prioritize being secure and flexible financially (i.e. having piles of cash in the bank). It's more about values than anything else. We are working on leaning to compromise when it comes to spending, but we both have the same values so our goals are aligned. The rest is just petty (where to go on vacation, how much to spend on groceries, etc). And the petty stuff doesn't matter really once you've agreed to establish a solid reserve and then invest 30%+ of your income. Knowing we are doing that makes me care a lot less what he spends golfing, and it prevents him from worrying too much about how much my latest handbag cost.

I met Mrs. Rhino at a party a mutual friend threw. Her finances were actually kind of a wreck, but that didn't come out until we had been dating for a while. But she's not a spendthrift, so it was OK (and I was able to sense that earlier in the relationship). But if her finances were a wreck AND she was a spendthrift, then that would probably be bad.

When I was single, I never really focused on frugality as an important trait. Mainly because I never really thought it was going to be realistic to find it in a 20something girl. I more so focused on high education and career drive as a trait. If she makes good money, frugality doesn’t carry the same urgency in my mind.

I ended up meeting my future wife in business school. While she wasn’t very savvy with personal finance, she also wasn’t a spender. After we got together, I stressed the importance of saving and investing for the long-term. It took a little convincing but she got on board fairly quickly.

So I don’t think you have to find a Boglehead by nature. Just avoid the materialistic overspenders. You can work with people in-between.

a friend and i were walking into a bar/nightclub as she and a friend were walking out. she was gorgeous.
probably never would have seen her again, had the bouncer not bounced me for violating the 'dress code' (sporting black converse sneakers; dress shoes were required).
upon being bounced, proceeded to car, and she and her friend were just getting into their car, fortuitously parked right next to ours...
with the courage of a few 'pre-game' beers, i requested that they accompany us to a different club, or perhaps grab some food at a nearby diner.
they chose the diner. things went well and we spent the next day together.
the rest, as they say, is history.

i was in my mid-twenties, a grad student with hardly 2 cents to rub together; she was a waitress...
27 or so years later, with 3 kids, 2 of them in college, 2 houses, and in the 'two-comma club' in our retirement account.
i guess in hindsight we were both bogleheads from the get-go, and it has rewarded us well.
and, i think the primary reason for our 'frugality' is that we were both raised in very poor families, each with 9 kids.

but, there were no finances involved in that initial meeting... it was the way she wore that red dress... and she still looks great in it.

OP, I hope whoever you find, whether or not she is a Boglehead, shares many of your values and is a good fit for you. A common vision about finances is important in a relationship, but there are a lot of things that are important.

In my case, it was just good luck--we started dating in high school when we were both 16. Our financial upbringings were very different. My mom's income came from a family business, and because it's year to year income was so unpredictable, was frugal and I learned from her to live well within my means. The business was lucrative enough that we had a middle class or upper middle class lifestyle, but I knew from a very young age that saving money was important and that making thoughtful decisions about money was important. My wife was the first child of immigrants--they were thrust in the United States in their mid-20s and found themselves making what was (to them) unreal amounts of money. They were literally living the American dream--they lived right up to the edge of their means and beyond, and this worked well while things were good, but when my (to be) father in law lost his job and my mother in law became disabled and took a medical retirement that vastly reduced her income, all of a sudden they had trouble paying for things--this hit during my wife's freshman year of college, and every semester was a tedious exercise in scraping together enough financial aid and dollars from somewhere to pay her tuition. It left a very strong impression on her, and it changed her spending habits completely. Then when we married after school, it was easy for us both to embrace the value of living within our means, which I think is the foundational Boglehead value.

It turns out that we were just a good match--she is excellent with the details, making sure we never pay a late fee on anything, making sure we get the best prices and always remember our discount cards; I am stronger at thinking of the big picture and how we can secure our financial future through investing. So together we make a good financial team.

And it's pretty awesome that we still love each other like crazy and are each other's best friend.

nisiprius wrote:I found Mrs. Boglehead "across a crowded room." Now, to be honest, I was not having much luck with women and felt a bit desperate--so it didn't take an awful lot in the way of someone actually returning my smile to trigger the ZAP! KABLOWIE! SHE'S THE ONE response, but in any case... we were mutually thunderstruck. We were married less than six months later, but that does not take into account the fact that I was out of the country for three of those months doing grad work. She still has the letters.

It was not a left-brained process. It did not even involve those silly shallow personal-ads things. Well, OK, we knew there weren't any extreme mismatches in religion or politics. I do remember having some explicit conversations about how many kids we wanted. I like classical music and show tunes; she hates ALL music. She loves animals, I don't. We have different brand preferences in many of the key brands that define our identity as human beings. Both of us were attractive enough for practical purposes but NEITHER of us fit the idealized fantasy description of the physical type we would say appeals to us. Oh, sure, we both like long walks on the beach.

I don't remember money coming into the picture at all. Well, I probably mentioned that I was earning IIRC about $3100 a year at the time. (The sixties). (Not a lot even then).

I married the person who felt RIGHT, and hoped she was financially compatible with me. Luckily, she was. I am afraid there's a lot of luck involved in courtship and mating and not much that can or should be done about it.

But how can you fall in love with someone before knowing how they relate to money?

The only three people I was ever in love with were all frugal guys who avoided debt and handled money responsibly. I don't think that's a coincidence. They didn't dress expensively or try to use money to impress me. They took me to restaurants that they could afford. I was careful not to order the most expensive thing on the menu. I assumed they would notice if I did.

None of them used a coupon on the first date though.

On one first date, we went to Braum's for ice cream, and as he was picking up his ice cream float at the register, it slipped out of his hand and splattered all over the floor. That had to be hugely embarrassing for him. But he retained his composure, turned to the cashier, and asked, "Is it customary to replace those for free?" I've lost touch with him over the years, but I still remember him using the word "customary" when under pressure. I was impressed that he knew how to politely ask for a sympathy freebie -- I would have stood there tongue-tied.

So, to answer the OP's question, I would recommend trying to be the Mr. Boglehead that Mrs. Boglehead is looking for.

But no coupons on the first date. If she's not a Boglehead, she'll tell all her friends, with unflattering embellishments, and you'll get an inconvenient reputation. Once you know she's a Boglehead, get the coupons out then. (For our 15th anniversary, my husband and I went to an expensive French restaurant -- with a coupon. And I ordered the priciest thing on the menu.)

Use your brain, instead of your eyes. Or use both your brain and your eyes in an ideal world.

Anatomy 101 - The brain is a complex organ capable of simultaneously calculating all sorts of scenarios while conducting a conversation with Ms. Potential Boglehead. The brain is held in a protected shell and is located above the bony structure that houses your nostrils. Don't forget to breathe when conversing with Ms. Boglehead.

fratdude wrote:I am asking for input for anyone married to a Mrs. or Mr. Boglehead.

The dating world is a struggle and maybe learning where you all met your spouses would give good clues on where to look.

Well...(ahem)....you could always ask the admins to create a dating forum on this site. Or just give it a whirl, for example.... "42 y o SWM professional looking for marriage-minded female, 30-40 years old...please send full-length photos (of her portfolio and 2012 federal tax return)".

travellight wrote:I'm not a guy, Victoria. I don't find using a coupon unclassy.

I had a guy/friend who I knew wanted to treat me to a nice restaurant so I picked out one that I had a 50% coupon for. We got there and had a great meal, then when it came time to pay the check, I discovered I had left the coupon at home. He didn't even know I had a discount planned. I asked him to wait while I ran outside and scoured the streets and found the publication where I found another coupon and returned in a few minutes. It saved him 30-40$. I just see this as thoughtful and money wise rather than not classy.

travellight wrote: The story earlier of someone who ordered 9-12$ martinis and the most expensive items on the menu come to mind. If I think someone else is paying the bill, I will order conservatively and thoughtfully. If I really want to go all out and be lavish and indulge in dinner, I will insist on paying the bill.

A friend "set me up" with Miss Cameroon 2002 in Paris a couple of years ago. We went to my favorite club, Aux Trois Mailletz, in the Left Bank. I asked her if she wanted some wine, so she ordered a 200 plus euro bottle of champagne. Moral of the story....avoid blind dates with beauty queens. (Or maybe I am generalizing from a sample size of one. Apologies to any Boglehead beauty queens reading this).

A friend "set me up" with Miss Cameroon 2002 in Paris a couple of years ago. We went to my favorite club, Aux Trois Mailletz, in the Left Bank. I asked her if she wanted some wine, so she ordered a 200 plus euro bottle of champagne. Moral of the story....avoid blind dates with beauty queens. (Or maybe I am generalizing from a sample size of one. Apologies to any Boglehead beauty queens reading this).